Catastrophic whole-ship losses could erase engineering departments. HMS Hood is the example: her destruction took her engineering complement with nearly the entire crew. The same problem affected many lost ships, making trained technical manpower part of the cost of a sinking. Engineers' relative survival rates are not quantified, so the point is the loss of specialist capacity rather than a unique casualty mechanism aboard Hood.
Notable Point · 45:19-45:27
Ship losses could erase entire engineering departments
A brief aside uses HMS Hood to show how catastrophic loss could wipe out a ship's entire technical complement.